Aiden will turn three in a little over a month, and he’s reached the stage where every other sentence begins with “Why?” In his case it’s not just, Why did the chicken cross the road? It’s, Why is the road there? And, Why is the chicken on this side of the road in the first place? There’s no final answer, because there’s no final question.

He also lives in a fairly rich fantasy world. When I dropped by Suzanne’s house this afternoon, he called me into the playroom so he could point out the dragon that was flying in the yard just outside the window. Later he used the blood pressure monitor to make us all hearing aids. (“I’m making two hearing aids for you, and two hearing aids for me.” Good, because three would be silly.) After that, he made us strap ourselves into our chairs while we waited for the plane to take off. (“No talking on the plane.” Yeah, right.)

Even though he has a cold that would slow down an ordinary person, he went pretty much nonstop for the whole two and a half hours I spent with them today. Suzanne is baby sitting the two little ones overnight, so she has the job of getting them in and out of beds and tubs and such, and making sure they’re fed and changed. As for me, I got to be Uncle Mike again. That’s a role I think I play pretty well. It’s definitely my favorite.

Kylie is at the stage where she will parrot back whatever you say, as long as it interests her. She is also putting together fairly complex sentences on her own, but she gets the words tangled up sometimes. She knows her animal noises, but she doesn’t limit herself to what the See-and-Say tells her. I asked her today what the turtle says, and she didn’t have to think long before she said, “Mooooo,” with a big grin on her face. She has a well-tuned sense of humor already. If something’s funny, she’s likely to give out a big belly laugh and say, “Funny!”

Suzanne’s new cat’s name is Sushi. She’s a beautiful mix of Siamese and tabby, and she has a mellow personality for an animal rescued from a shelter (and blind in one eye). I met her last night. Today, with the babies in full force, she made herself a little more scarce, but she didn’t really seem to mind the commotion. She’s obviously a cat who loves people, and that’s good, because her people will come to love her in time.